Lost Fic: See the World III

[hollycomb]

Title: See the World, 3/3
Author: hollycomb
Pairing: Martin Keamy/Captain Gault
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through the most recent episode
Summary: What might be described as a heightened case of cabin fever.



Gault wakes up to shouts from the higher decks, decides he's dreaming and rolls over. He's vaguely aware of Keamy asleep beside him, the scent of him a kind of dull brine hanging in the air. He got elbowed three times in the night for snoring, and thought at least once that it was Vera telling him to knock if off or go find someplace else to sleep. But Vera never left his ribs sore after her warnings, and he winces against the sheets when he rolls over, feels achy in the comfortable way only a person in bed can appreciate.

He hears the shouts again, and this time willfully ignores them, though the first push of concern has started in his chest, rolling over his senses and waking him bit by bit. A woman screams from somewhere up on deck -- Regina, certainly, the only woman left on board -- and he opens his eyes. Keamy is already awake, staring at the ceiling like he'll discover the problem there.

"What's going on?" Gault asks in a groan, as if Keamy will know. It's been two days since the scientists left, and Gault prays they haven't come back bloodied and broken. An electrical storm brought down their chopper when they reached the Island, but everyone on board survived, and apparently even the chopper is still operable. Gault hopes they won't suffer the same fate as Naomi among the people on the Island who claim to be the survivors of the Oceanic crash, or at least not Faraday and Charlotte, who seem, respectively, too kind and too smart to die here. Miles could go either way.

"Something's wrong," Keamy says.

"No kidding," Gault mutters when another scream rips through the walls of the stateroom, this one definitely a man's, sounding less terrified and more maniacal.

They dress more slowly than they should, Keamy out of indifference and Gault out of dread. Gault is sorry that they can't linger in bed, that he won't be held tightly in the only available fashion, Keamy moving inside him with a sleepwalker's rhythm. It has at last become a comfort, having anyone's arms around him, and someone who isn't afraid after what they've been hearing from the Island, all the better.

Today, there is no escape from the fear that has settled over the rest of them like a mist. Even Keamy's men have begun locking themselves in the armory at night. Gault is glad not to be walking up to the deck alone as someone screams, over and over again:

"Who the hell are you people?"

They reach the deck and find that it is Brandon doing the screaming, the rest of the crew and half of Keamy's men circled around him like animal handlers, their arms stretched out as if to push him back into the center of the circle, should he try to escape. Brandon looks wild enough for this kind of treatment, tears streaked down his cheeks, and as Gault is coming up the last of the stairs he gets a shock of baseless recognition that nearly stops him in his tracks. Has this happened before? More than once?

"What the hell's going on?" Keamy has already drawn his gun, which seems like the worst kind of omen. Minkowski is lying motionless on the deck, and Gault assumes that Brandon has gone insane and killed him.

"Stay still!" Keamy shouts. He points his gun at Brandon, who is stumbling around, taking huge breaths and holding the sides of his head like he's trying to keep his brain in.

"Grab him!" Keamy says, flicking his head at two of his men. They look at him uncertainly, and only Omar moves forward to do as Keamy asked. He tackles Brandon from behind, and Brandon struggles helplessly, hiccups a sob.

"How did I get here?" he cries. "What do you people want?"

When he's restrained, Gault crosses the circle to Minkowski and kneels beside him. He looks for gaping wounds or bruises on his neck, but there are none, and when he checks for a pulse, he feels one hammering hard, as if Minkowski is running on a treadmill, not lying limp on the deck.

"He's alive!" Gault says, more relieved than he expected, as if this proves something. He hauls Minkowski up, and the doctor, Ray, rushes over to get his feet.

"We'll take him to the sick bay," Ray says.

Keamy walks up to Omar and Brandon, who is still fighting feebly, and pushes Omar aside. He clocks Brandon in the back of the head with his gun, and Regina shrieks. Brandon falls to the deck with a kind of splat, like a pile of seaweed, and Gault realizes for the first time that both he and Minkowski are soaking wet.

"You can take him, too," Keamy says, nudging Brandon with the toe of his boot.

"What the hell happened to him?" Gault asks Ray as they carry Minkowski to the sick bay. Jeff and Regina are following with Brandon. "Did Brandon hurt him?"

"I don't know," Ray says. "Apparently they took a boat to the Island --"

"They did what?" Gault nearly drops Minkowski.

"Yeah, well. You were sleeping."

"Might someone have tried to stop them?" Gault shouts. They arrive at the sick bay and hoist Minkowski into one of the beds. Regina and Jeff are close behind with Brandon, who is still mostly unconscious but moaning slightly.

"He shouldn't have hit him in the head," Ray says, frowning down at Brandon. "He probably has a head injury already, that's probably what's caused the disorientation. I don't know exactly what happened to them, but getting hit in the head isn't going to help." He turns back to Gault with a look of accusation

"Tell it to Keamy," Gault says. "I didn't hit him." Everyone in the sick bay is now looking at him as if he should have been able to stop this, and he wishes he didn't feel the same way. He storms out and returns to the deck, where the onlookers have mostly dispersed. Keamy is examining the Zodiac, which is wet and turned on its side.

"I don't think they damaged the boat," he says when Gault approaches.

"Well, that's a relief." Gault scoffs. Keamy gives him the look that is becoming familiar, as if he can't believe Gault ever learned to tie his shoes, let alone captain a ship of this size.

"Yeah, it is," he says. "Cause if that chopper doesn't come back, this is our only way onto the Island."

"Right, and it worked out really well for Minkowski and Brandon."

"Those idiots? That doesn't mean anything."

"Why don't you hold off on that conclusion until we've found out what the hell's even wrong with them?"

Gault walks away from him, not knowing where he's headed. There is nowhere on this ship that he wants to be.

*

Brandon is dead by nightfall. When Ray passes Gault in the hall, the left side of his lab coat darkened by a gigantic bloodstain, Gault doesn't even ask. Ray's best explanation for Minkowski's condition is that he "seems to think he's elsewhere" and is suffering blackouts.

"So he's gone insane, then?" Gault says. "Just from getting in a boat?"

"He has periods of lucidity. He wants to be -- released from the sick bay."

"Do you think he should be?"

Ray looks down at his lab coat, which is growing stiff with Brandon's blood. "No," he says.

"Alright, then."

Gault goes back to the stateroom, hoping that Keamy will be there. When he pushes the door open and sees Keamy on the floor by the bed, doing crunches, he bucks what's left of his restraint, bolts the door.

"Keamy," he says, and something in his voice must be different, because for once Keamy immediately acknowledges that he's being spoken to, stops his crunching and lies still. He stares, out of breath, as Gault sinks to the floor and straddles him.

Gault puts his hands over Keamy's ears and leans down to him. Keamy grabs his sides as if he's preparing to throw him off, but when Gault kisses him, pries his lips apart and licks his teeth, his tongue, Keamy only laughs into his mouth like he can't believe Gault has the nerve.

"Please," Gault says, and he moves to Keamy's neck like a small consolation, runs his tongue beneath his jaw line. Keamy's hands slacken on his sides, and Gault presses his face to his throat, listens to his heart pound like a war drum.

"Brandon's dead," Gault says. Keamy sighs, not out of sympathy or regret, but with impatience, because Gault has stopped grinding against his lap and started talking.

"It's his own fault," he says, trying to move past this by tugging Gault's shirt over his head.

"I wish I was like you," Gault says. "I wish I didn't care."

"You don't."

"Oh really?" The welcome distraction of being irritated with Keamy spreads through him, something warm and red-tinted.

"No. You just think that you should. Guilt. It's a waste of time. C'mere."

He pulls Gault down and kisses him on the mouth, arching up into him, eager for something new. They've worn everything else out, especially in the last two days, with opportunities to do anything else on this ship growing few and farther between. Gault lets his bones go weak, wishes he had tried this sooner. He'd forgotten how good it is, hasn't even kissed his wife like this since before they were married. Keamy is bruisingly enthusiastic, rolls Gault over and crushes the breath out of him. Gault stuffs down a laugh when he realizes Keamy is probably just glad he's found a way to reliably shut him up.

Keamy leans Gault onto the bed, kneels behind him and takes his trousers down with one hand. Gault flops over gratefully, licks his lips. If he'd known it would be this fucking fantastic, letting someone else do all the work, he would have found a bloke like Keamy a long time ago. Doubtful that there is another quite like him, though, or that Gault would be able to face this down outside of a marooned freighter. Keamy's chest is flush against his back, and Gault can feel his heartbeat thrumming up his spine, hard but hollow. He shuts his eyes and sees them both dead in less than a week. There is no other way out of this.

Afterward, Keamy climbs into the bed, and Gault collapses behind him. He feels reality creep back in the way it always does -- brief repulsion, a fleeting desire to put his face against Keamy's back, then the weight of everything else. It's like scratching an itch and being left with nail marks on his skin, sometimes literally.

He puts the light out, gets under the blankets. Keamy is still breathing hard, awake.

"Where did Widmore find you?" Gault asks him, for the second time.

Keamy rolls onto his back. Gault can't see him in the dark stateroom, but he knows the geography of this bed and Keamy's body well enough by now. A tinny scream comes from somewhere on the ship, or maybe from the ocean.

"I have a reputation," Keamy says. "That's how he found me."

"I'm sure you do. How many people do you suppose you've killed?"

"Why the hell would I tell you that?"

"You might have killed Brandon, you know. Hitting him in the head like that."

"Who gives a shit? He was a lost cause."

"Where did you come from?" Gault asks, his voice rising with every word. "Was what I meant to ask."

"Las Vegas."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. That doesn't explain anything."

"I don't have to explain myself to you."

"Maybe not. But I think I'm owed an explanation, at this point. What would it hurt?"

Keamy laughs. He puts his hand around Gault's throat. It's a regular thing, not alarming anymore. Gault does it to himself now, when Keamy is not around, feels for the tick in the hollow of his throat, covers his neck with a hand not as big as Keamy's.

"What do you want to know?" he asks, tightening his grip, daring Gault to ask the wrong question.

"Have you got a family?" Gault asks. "I've got a wife and a son," he volunteers when Keamy's fingers pinch in slightly.

"Do I look like I'm fucking married?"

"I don't know, do I? You must have had parents, once. You said you had a brother."

"I never said that."

"Yes, you did."

Keamy is silent for a moment, maybe weighing his options here. Gault tries to sort them out: Keamy could kill him and be done with it. Nobody would be able to do anything about it. He could roll over and try to sleep, stay anonymous forever, lose what might be his last chance to impress someone in a dark room with the particulars of what he's seen. He could lie just to shut Gault up.

"I'm a failed government experiment," Keamy says. "I didn't leave the Marines. They left me. They revised the plan and started over."

"Right, mate." Gault laughs, relieved that he went with the lie. "You don't feel like a robot to me. Though you do act like one, I'll give you that."

"I didn't say I was a robot."

"How else could you be an experiment?"

"That's classified."

"Who cares? You think I'm going to go home and write a book about all of this? You think I'm even going to get home, ever, that you are?"

Keamy doesn't respond. His thumb is moving against the side of Gault's neck, fluttering, an artificial pulse tapping against his skin.

"Widmore didn't give me a briefing on you," he finally says.

"Well, he didn't give me one on you, either, Keamy, so I guess we're even."

Gault doesn't realize until long after Keamy has rolled toward the wall that he might have been asking to know something about him, a fair exchange of information. He feels stupidly guilty, and turns toward Keamy, puts his face against his back so he'll have the conciliatory pleasure of pushing it off. He falls asleep that way, waiting.

*

Frank returns the following morning not with the scientists, but with two people from the Island. Everything quickly goes to hell.

"One of them has whatever Minkowski has," Keamy tells Gault, who has decided not to leave the stateroom anymore. The vodka is long gone. The sight of Keamy coming through the door has replaced it, and he's too far gone to worry about how much more dangerous this new addiction is. Like the drinking, it went so quickly from a distraction to an obsession, to something he needs more and more of, never enough.

"Whatever Minkowski has," Gault repeats listlessly. He sits on the bed beside Keamy, watches him open a can of tuna fish and eat it with his fingers.

"Do you want some?" Keamy barks, annoyed by his staring.

"I don't have much of an appetite, mate."

Keamy finishes his lunch and leaves. Gault tries to read while he's gone, a copy of The Sea, The Sea that he found in Faraday's room. It's more entertaining than the Bible, particularly Faraday's barely legible scrawlings in the margins, but he still can't concentrate. At one point, an alarm goes off. He sits, listens, waits.

When Keamy returns, he has Frank with him. The alarm has been turned off. Keamy walks to the desk, picks up the empty vodka bottle and throws it into the corner opposite the bed, smashing it into a thousand pieces.

"Jesus!" Frank says, backing toward the door. Keamy draws his hands through his hair, collects himself.

"Frank let them talk to Faraday!" Keamy says, pointing at Frank. Gault stands up, tries to even nominally understand what is going on.

"Let who talk to Faraday?"

"I thought you said the Captain wanted to see me?" Frank says to Keamy, frowning.

"He does," Keamy says, still pointing. "Tell him to stay the hell away from those survivors," he says to Gault. "Tell him I'm handling it."

"What were they doing talking to Faraday?" Gault asks. "Is he alright?"

"Hell if I know!" Frank says. "He thought he could help the one guy with his -- disorientation."

"Leave that to the doctor," Keamy says.

"Because he did such a good job with Minkowski!" Frank scoffs, shakes his head. "He's dead, by the way," he says to Gault. "Captain, I gotta tell you --"

"Listen to Keamy," Gault says. "Don't let those survivors manipulate you. If they even are survivors. Naomi is dead because of them. God knows what they're doing with Faraday and Charlotte."

"They said --"

"I don't care what they said! We've got no reason to trust them."

"What's talking to Faraday going to hurt?" Frank asks, at a loss. Gault has no idea how to answer that. He thinks of Faraday's handwriting in the margins of the novel he's been reading. Beside one passage he wrote: it took me 210 pages to decide this narrator is unreliable.

"Frank," Keamy snaps. "Stay out of it."

Frank pushes out of the room, and Gault is relieved when he's gone, watches Keamy bolt the door.

"One of them wants to talk to you," he says.

"Who?" It doesn't matter -- Gault doesn't want to speak to anybody.

"One of the survivors. If that's what they even are," Keamy adds, and Gault knows he doesn't really suspect them of working for Linus, just wants to encourage him to think so. "His name is Sayid Jarrah."

"Good for him. What's he want to talk to me for?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't bother."

"Alright."

Keamy picks him up, pins him to the wall. Gault kisses him hard, has been waiting for this all day. Keamy is more responsive than usual, less mechanical, either because he's upset about Frank's insubordination or proud of himself for making the Captain of this ship his pawn. Maybe both. Gault pulls at him like he's a shirt he's trying to take off, can't get him close enough or take it hard enough, because this is the only thing that blanks his mind clear like a tall glass stacked with ice. He imagines the bubbles from the shot of tonic jumping against his face, the poisonous smell, good enough to get him a little bit high before he even takes a sip. This is all of that and more, another thing he doesn't really believe a person can recover from.

"Is Minkowski really dead?" he asks when he's close to falling asleep, his face pressed to the mattress. Keamy is beside him, programming a digital watch.

"Yeah. Listen. We're going to get Linus. Frank's flying us over there at six AM. This whole thing's gotten fucked up, and I can't wait around to straighten out this bullshit with the scientists."

"You're going to bring them back, too, though?" Gault sits up on an elbow, stares at him. Keamy curses his watch, slaps it against his knee.

"What the hell's wrong with this thing?" he mutters.

"Keamy!"

"I'm sorry you're suddenly so attached to them, but no, we're not going to waste time trying to find the scientists," he says, glaring at Gault.

"Attached to them! They're people! Our people! Can you at least conceive of the fact that a normal human being would want to do something? To help them?"

"Sure, fine, but we don't have time."

"What is Widmore paying you?" Gault shoves Keamy's shoulder, makes him look at him. Keamy grabs Gault's throat, pushes him back against the wall. "Tell me," Gault coughs out. "I want to know what you're getting out of this."

"It's my job." Keamy holds him in place, watches him. Gault thinks for a moment that this might be it, that Keamy will snap his neck so he can get a good night's rest before the trip to the Island. But he releases him, gets out of bed and begins packing guns in a duffel.

"I'll go, then," Gault says, rubbing his throat. "I'll take the Zodiac and bring back Faraday and --"

"You'll end up like Minkowski and Brandon," Keamy says.

"Well, that's my problem, isn't it?"

"No. I need you to stay here and keep things in order until I get back. Make sure those people from the Island don't screw anything up."

"Why don't you leave one of your men here to do that?"

"Because I need them with me. Don't argue with me, Gault."

He gets smashed apart by the sound of his name, can’t respond. It's the first time Keamy has said it, the first time he's even heard it in what feels like years. He's been 'Captain' for the past few weeks, in name if nothing else.

"Listen," Keamy says. He sighs, rubs a hand across his face. He seems constantly exhausted, and considering how quickly he popped up when Gault snooped through his things, he wonders how well he really ever sleeps.

"If we run across the scientists, and if we have room on the chopper, maybe, depending on what's going on, we'll bring one or two of them back. That's the best I can do."

Gault knows he's lying, but slides back down into bed and pretends to be placated by this, because he also knows there is nothing he can say or do to convince Keamy to help those people. He knows, too, that he won't be able to do anything himself, not really. They're gone.

Hours pass, and neither of them can sleep. Gault has never seen Keamy tense before, watches with fascination out of the corner of his eye as he tosses and turns, hissing curses under his breath.

"Here," Gault finally says, tired of listening to it. He takes Keamy's hand, for a moment is distracted by the way it feels in his, heavy and hot. He brings Keamy's fingers to his throat. Keamy leaves them there, stares at Gault for twenty heartbeats, then puts his mouth on the place where his pulse stutters hardest, the gap in his collar bone, an evolutionary mystery, something so vulnerable and so easy to reach. Gault goes hard while Keamy licks the soft skin there, is too tired to do anything about it. Eventually they fall asleep, Keamy's face tucked under Gault's chin.

Gault dreams that the ship explodes, disappears in a fireball bigger than this Island he's never seen. It's a profound relief, and it feels so real he wakes up with his eyes wet, thinking it's over, he's free. Keamy is standing in the middle of the room, buckling his belt. Gault wipes his face, watches him pick up his duffel and go to leave.

"Martin," he says. Keamy turns back with just one shoulder, one cheek, his hand on the doorknob.

"Huh?"

"What'll we do if you die?"

The duffel shifts in Keamy's hand; Gault hears metal clicking against metal. Keamy's silhouette is huge against the light from beneath the door, and it dawns on Gault like regaining breath, what he's lately been realizing. He's wanted to be consumed by something bigger than himself for a long time, forever. Something that would certainly kill him if he lost his footing for even a moment. He wanted to be in the ocean for the same reason, remembers being very young and running toward it before he knew how to swim, his mother screaming behind him, rushing to stop him from drowning.

"I won't," Keamy says, and he walks out the door.

*

Gault has been partly looking forward to sobriety, but, as ever, it's disappointing. With Keamy gone, he faces the same problem he's had every time he's tried to quit drinking. What the hell to do with all these hours?

Ray comes to tell him about Minkowski around noon, and Gault is relieved to have something to think about. He puts on a jacket while Ray stands in the middle of the room and surveys it, his lip curling a bit at the broken glass and the wrecked sheets.

"There was nothing I could do for him," Ray says. "But that man from the Island seems to have stabilized. They want to see you, to talk to you."

"Fine," Gault says, having grown at least curious about these people. "Bring them to the deck. I'll be up there in a minute."

He goes to the kitchen and finds it completely empty. There was enough food here for at least another month last time he visited, but he suddenly can't remember when that was. Perhaps it's been a month. His stomach growls, and he leaves the kitchen, heads for the deck.

The sun is harsh and hot, directly above them, and he lingers in the doorway that leads out from quarters, surveys the deck. The sound of chains clicking together comes from above him, and he doesn't think anything of it, spots Ray standing with two men across the deck, one tall and dark, the other smaller and lighter.

"Hey!" the smaller one calls, and for a moment Gault thinks he's talking to him. Then he looks up, sees Regina wrapped in chains. She's dead, he thinks with alarm, but she hasn't even jumped yet. When she does, both of the men standing with Ray race forward as if to help her.

"Don't just stand there!" the smaller man shouts to a few crew members who are back near the stern, staring and silent. "What's wrong with you people"?

Gault trips out of the doorway, watches them shouting about ropes and getting her up. As if the splash she made when she hit the water wasn't a clear enough death knell.

"Stop!" he shouts as members of the crew begin to listen to the survivors.

"She just jumped!" the smaller man yells.

"It's over," Gault says. He walks down to the deck, newly confident without Keamy here to dwarf him. "She's gone."

The survivors make a fuss about Regina. Though they're new here, he's surprised they don't already understand.

"I didn't jump in, or order my crew to jump in, because I didn't want to lose any more people," he tells them, sympathizing regretfully with Keamy's short patience for moralizing. These protests are well out of context. This is beyond explanation, but he tries. The engines, the sabotage, his orders. He even tells them who he's working for when they ask.

"This is Charles Widmore's boat?" the smaller one asks, as if an affirmative answer would be a portent of the apocalypse.

"That's right," Gault says, recognizing the man now, from a photograph Widmore showed him, a warning about his daughter trying to interfere. Desmond Hume, the lost sailor. "You know him."

He shows them the black box, not really sure why. Acting as if he actually knows more about what's going on here than other people do is a bit intoxicating, and anyway he feels like a chat. When he's through explaining about the 324 bodies Linus sunk into the wreckage of the phony Oceanic 815, he feels he's done a fairly good job of convincing them that, at least at the outset, this mission to capture Linus was worthwhile. Their protests silenced for now, he summons Ray to take them back to their quarters.

When they're gone, he hurries to bolt the door of the stateroom and goes for Faraday's copy of The Sea, The Sea, which is pushed halfway under the bed. He flips frantically through the pages, until he finds the Dylan Thomas lines he remembers reading, toward the back, written in pencil:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

"Sang in my chains like the sea," Gault mutters, maybe five hundred times, until he's laughing like a lunatic.

*

He resumes control of the ship, even beats the hell out of two crew members when they try to take off in the Zodiac. He's not sure if he's become so adamant about no one going to the Island because he himself is too much of a coward to go after the scientists, or if he's just protecting the Zodiac because, eventually, he will.

Sayid bursts into the stateroom one night, and Gault looks up hopefully, expecting Keamy. Not seeing him there doesn't make the news about who has been sabotaging the ship any easier. It was the janitor all along, of course. Gault cuffs him and locks him in a bunker. He should kill him, maybe, but he's never killed anyone.

"You're working for Linus?" he asks the man, who Sayid tells him is actually called Michael, not Kevin. What's the fucking difference, Gault wants to scream. He's just another stranger who can't be trusted, like anyone else, like himself, as far as the others are concerned.

Michael doesn't answer, which is answer enough.

He hears the helicopter that night, feels it coming closer like a blood red sun rising through him. Keamy has returned with Linus. Gault has discovered and retained the traitor. They'll make Michael fix the engines, and maybe Gault will have time to recover the scientists while he's working.

He doesn't really believe any of it will go that well, walks to the deck like he's wearing his chains. Keamy is helping to unload someone from the helicopter, someone who looks dead. Gault watches, thinking Keamy has accidentally killed Linus, then he realizes it's one of Keamy's men on death's door, that Linus must have gotten away.

"I need you to tell me how many people are on that Island, and where every single one of them is," Keamy is growling in Sayid's face when Gault walks down to the deck.

"And why would I do that?" Sayid asks.

"Keamy!" Gault shouts, before he can rip the man's head off. "What the hell do you think you're doing, mate?"

Shouldn't have tossed the 'mate' in there, but he does that when he's nervous. When Keamy's eyes flick to him, Gault is sorry he spoke at all. He walks to Gault and sticks a gun under his jaw in lieu of a greeting. He looks ten years older than he did two days ago, and Gault remembers Regina calling him flat, can't imagine a better word for his expression. It's not blank, but trying to be, pressed down.

"You gave me up," Keamy says, and the flatness peels at the corners, his jaw going tight.

"What?"

"Linus knew who I was," Keamy says. Gault can see the shadow of some now-buried fear on his face, knows that men like him should never be allowed to be afraid, that they will take it out on everyone around them, tenfold. "He knew my name. He knew everything about me."

Everything? Gault doesn't see how that could be true. He's beginning to doubt that there is anything to Keamy except what's here on the surface, the gun pointed in his face.

"No." Gault swallows hard. "I'm not the one who gave you up."

"Then who did?"

"I'll show you," Gault says. He reaches up, pushes the gun down carefully.

Keamy keeps the gun in his hand, but follows Gault without hesitation. Gault's heart is hammering, and he wishes he could let Keamy appreciate this, calm him down, but there is no going back to the way things were. Keamy has been to the Island. Gault doesn't dare ask where Linus is, what happened.

"Sayid told me," he explains as they walk. "This man was on the Island with them. He made a bargain with Linus to save his son, and now he's working for him. I've got him in here."

They come to the bunker that Michael is locked inside, and Gault takes Keamy's arm as he reaches for the door. Keamy jerks like a caged animal, his knuckles white on the handle of the gun.

"Wait," Gault says, not sure what he's asking for. Keamy barrels into the bunker anyway, and Gault can only follow.

Keamy has Michael kicked to the floor before Gault can even get inside, and he's kicking him again, again, asking him questions.

"My name," he says in a snarl. "Do you know my name?"

"Keamy," Michael says, like he's spitting blood. "Martin Keamy."

"Did you give it to him?" Keamy asks.

"Who?" Michael is coughing up his breaths; Keamy probably broke a rib or two. Gault realizes with slow panic, like water boiling around him, that he's about to watch Keamy murder this man.

"Benjamin Linus, did you give him my name?"

"Yeah," Michael huffs, like he wants Keamy to kill him. Of course, he doesn't have much choice.

"Wait," Gault says when Keamy cocks his gun. "Wait! Martin, no!"

Too late, but then, not. Keamy tries to fire again, can't. Gault feels weirdly responsible, as if calling him Martin stopped everything. Keamy takes the clip out, his knuckles so white Gault expects bone to break through skin.

"Martin, we need him," he says. He'll stick with his first name, live or die by the risk of that intimacy. "He's the only one who can fix the engines."

"And what makes you so sure about that?" Keamy asks, still fooling with the gun.

"He's the one who broke them."

Keamy stands back for a moment, steadies himself before decking Michael cleanly across the face. Michael absorbs it with a wince, and his head hangs limp on his shoulders. Keamy stands and wipes the corner of his mouth, looks back at Gault like he might still be next.

"Come on," Gault says, leading him out of the room. "We'll deal with him later."

They walk out into the hall, Gault expecting the walls of the ship to fall down around them, the world to tip on its side. He hangs close to Keamy, doesn't know where he'll try to steer him. He's not sure he wants to be alone with him right now.

"I need your key," Keamy says.

"What?"

Frank comes out of nowhere, almost crashes into them. He's got a bloody rag in his hands, which fits the scene, appropriate set dressing.

"Captain," he says. "Mayhew just died. Doc couldn't do anything for him." He looks at Keamy. "The crew's asking a lot of questions about what happened to you guys over there."

"You can tell the crew that I'm dealing with it," Keamy says, already walking away. "Then you can go gas up the chopper, Frank. We're going back."

"Going back?" Frank nearly shouts. "What the hell for?"

Keamy turns back to give him a long-suffering stare. In the greenish hallway light, he looks like he did die over there, like he came back ghostly and rotted, still determined.

"Gas up the chopper, Frank," he says.

"Listen, Martin," Gault says, walking along with him when Frank leaves, trying the name again. It seemed, at one point, like useful information that Keamy gave him, something for the future, a password.

"While you were gone, there was some kind of sickness," he says, though that's not the right phrasing exactly. Keamy isn't really listening to him anyway, is still walking ahead.

"The crew, they've been exhibiting some very strange behavior," Gault stammers on. "Regina threw herself overboard, for God's sake. I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't point out that this might be exactly what's happening to you."

Keamy stops to look at him. Gault knows, maybe, that's he's fooling himself that Keamy wasn't always as he is right now, half-dead and looking to take some others down with him.

"I appreciate your concern," he says. "Now give me your key."

"That's not the protocol!"

Gault sees Regina in her chains, turning back to tell him again, he's going to kill us all. Keamy slams him back into the wall, hands on his throat, and for a moment this is a fresh breath of normalcy. Gault exhales as Keamy reaches for his neck, but he only grabs the chain that hangs around it, which holds the key to the safe in the stateroom, one they were told to open together if anything went seriously awry. Gault thinks the time for that sort of Plan B scrambling has well past, but Keamy is ever the pragmatist.

"Thank you," he says as he takes the key, with a sweetness that is much more terrifying in its sincerity than any ironic offering could have managed.

Keamy pushes into the stateroom and Gault follows, bolts the door behind them. The safe is on the floor under the desk, and Keamy gets to it without taking a second look round the place, unlocks it.

"The reason there are two keys is we're only supposed to open the safe together," Gault says, feeling like an idiot.

"You're here, aren't you?"

Keamy pulls open the safe and takes out a booklet with an octagonal insignia on it. He flips through it as if he's looking for something specific.

"What's that?" Gault asks. He already misses his role of leader of this ship, reclaimed for a few short days and blown easily to pieces by Keamy's return. It was nice, answering questions as if this all makes perfect sense to him, beating people into the deck for their own good.

"It's a secondary protocol," Keamy says.

"What does it say?" Nothing would surprise him, and he knows Keamy will do whatever's written on the page without a blink of consideration.

"It says where Linus is going."

So he did get away. Gault leans forward, tries to see what Keamy's reading, but his mind is racing, and he feels like he does when he tries to read things in dreams, as if the words are rearranging too quickly for him to process.

"How would Mr. Widmore know that?" he asks.

"Because he's a very smart man."

Gault doubts that very much sometimes.

"And if Linus knows that we're going to torch the Island," Keamy adds, flipping through the booklet. "There's only one place he can go."

"What do you mean, 'torch the Island'?" Gault asks, thinking of Faraday and Charlotte. "That was not the agreement! I agreed to ferry you here for an extraction mission!"

Keamy stands up and stares at him. The ridiculousness of the past few weeks -- if that's what they were, Gault wouldn't be surprised to learn they'd been centuries -- strikes him full force. He went to bed with this man. He spoke to him in the darkness and liked the smell of his skin. Thinking about it objectively is impossible. Keamy lifts his weapon.

"Fix my gun," he says, a kind of tired resignation in his voice. Gault takes it from him, realizing as he does that Keamy has actually thought about this, has decided not to kill him. He waits to feel relieved, doesn't.

*

Gault sulks in the stateroom, though he doesn't feel right doing so anymore. He flips through The Sea, The Sea, skims the ending. Between the third and second pages from the last, there is a tiny, worn slip of paper that flutters out onto his stomach. He picks it up, recognizes Faraday's handwriting:

cereal
oranges
milk
easy mac
bread
animal crackers
coffee
kleenex

It's just a grocery list converted to a bookmark, but it makes Gault's eyes well up, and he puts it against his face, tries to breathe it in though it long ago lost whatever scent it once had. There are still things that matter here, and time left to save them. It hits him so stiffly, and so belatedly, that he almost shouts it out loud. He folds the grocery list up and tucks it into his pocket, gets out of bed. Before he leaves the room, he reaches under his bed for his emergency supplies -- strips of jerky in plastic wrappers, more canned tuna, several gallons of water. He packs them into one of Keamy's duffels and takes them to the pantry.

Up on the deck, he finds Omar standing with Desmond and Sayid. Gault is not dissuaded by him, nor by his previous doubts about the intentions of the boat's newest passengers. He sees purpose unfolding in front of him like a map, feels again like a compass, like himself.

"Omar!" he calls. "Keamy wants you in the armory."

Omar frowns at Gault. Increasingly, Gault has gotten the feeling that Omar detests him, or maybe just suspects him of trying to usurp his position as Keamy's second in command. Gault came close to doing just that, feels delivered from it now.

"He said I wasn't supposed to let these two out of my sight," Omar says.

"I'll watch them. Go."

Omar leaves, somewhat reluctantly, and Gault knows he doesn't have much time now. Keamy will soon know that he's set things in motion, and his voucher for survival will be void.

"There's a pantry below our galley with enough room for two men," he tells Sayid and Desmond, speaking quickly. "I've left you a supply of food and water. You need to go there."

"Michael--" Sayid says. "Is he dead?"

"No, but not for lack of bloody trying, which is precisely why you two need to be hiding before Keamy comes back on this deck."

Sayid asks for the boat instead. Gault had been planning on taking it back to the Island himself, but perhaps Sayid will be more well-received by the people there who need rescuing.

Gault gives them the boat, and Faraday's heading. He's about to mention Faraday specifically, but what good would it do? He's become a sort of symbol for Gault, the phrase "animal crackers" running through his head like a mantra.

"What will you do when Keamy notices the Zodiac is missing?" Sayid asks.

Gault doubts he even will. His natural tunnel vision seems to have narrowed to a pinpoint.

"I'll tell him you stole it," he says. "Now go."

*

Night comes quickly, and Gault watches the last of the sunlight disappear over the prow. He's got Keamy's gun tucked into his jacket pocket, hasn't tried to fix it yet. Getting the boat to Sayid and Desmond was the easy part. Now, the fallout. He hasn't seen Keamy since the stateroom, the introduction of the second protocol. Keamy was a fool to tell him about his plans, fire and brimstone and nobody brought back alive, not even the people they came with. Gault wouldn't have believed anything else, but the fact that Keamy told him the truth worries him. If it comes to it, Gault might not be able to hurt him.

He knows that Keamy must be stopped, and that he's waited much too long to try. Evil breeds in sleepy contentment, and Gault went willingly to the trap, like something mythical, Odyssean. He snorts at the idea, but it's actually not far off. Even standing here waiting for the first shots to ring out behind him, he has known Keamy too well to dismiss him entirely, he has been him. It's a cheap conceit, but Keamy has been inside of him like no one else ever has, and still Gault knows more about him than he does about Gault. He came away with a few things after all, and Keamy took a lot in return, but not as much as Gault, nothing that could inspire the sort of whitewashed terror that Gault saw on him when he said that Linus knew everything.

Gault imagines Keamy's helicopter ride back to the ship, after Linus slipped away from him, given the upper hand by some traitor. Gault was the most obvious suspect, and Keamy must have dug his nails into his palms, remembering the careful way Gault had scraped information from him, making him think it was all his idea, that he wasn't the one getting fucked. Gault is surprised he didn't kill him on sight after landing, more furious with himself than the man who gave him up to Linus. He shouldn't have given Gault the chance to explain. The fact that he did will make the end of this unbearable. Already, he's somewhere on the ship, muttering with Omar, who has told him that Gault lied. Gault can feel his backtracking fury somewhere close, all the more lethal for being pushed into the tight ball where anything that gets to him goes, and the ship is only a bubble floating over Keamy's rage, it will disintegrate on contact.

When the sun is gone, he hears shouting on the deck. He takes the gun from his pocket and weighs it in his hand. It's the second gun he's taken from Keamy, though this one was given freely. He thinks of the first, knows that Faraday probably hasn't been able to bring himself to use it. More likely it's been taken and used against him. Gault steels himself, turns for the deck.

Keamy is slitting someone's throat when Gault arrives, and he feels panicked in a banal sort of way, like he's come late for a math test. It's Ray, sputtering like a fish while Keamy disposes of him. Frank is standing on the deck, watching this with his fists curled, his gray hair blowing in the breeze and reminding Gault of old westerns, a showdown at the corral.

"That change anything, Frank?" Keamy shouts. The cool, businesslike pretense he once put on is long gone. Gault still wants to know why this means so much to him. Maybe he's Widmore's son. Maybe Linus killed his parents. It's easier to think of him as related by blood to this place where he's bound and determined to spill so much of it.

"Another thirty seconds and it's someone else's turn!" Keamy shouts while Gault makes his way down to the deck. Two deckhands come out of the shadows to flank him, and Gault wonders why until he realizes they've seen the gun in his hand, that they think he's about to restore order here. He wishes they would stand clear, has not the slightest hope of restoring anything, but it won't make much of a difference in the end, he expects. Everybody on this ship is already dead.

He fires the gun into the air, is surprised when it works.

"Fixed your gun," he calls to Keamy when their eyes meet. The pleasant surprise of the miraculously repaired firearm reverberates through him, a good sign. Whatever happens next, he's doing the right thing.

Keamy's face clears of anger, and he goes calm, as if he's received his own sign, is experiencing his own certainty. Gault can see it all over him, and he knows now that he won't be able to kill Keamy, even as he watches Keamy realize that, with this final act of treason, he'll have no problem killing Gault. He looks relieved.

"Now stand down, Martin," Gault says, the name a last stab or a last pathetic peace offering, he isn't sure. "Or I will fire."

Keamy hands Omar the knife he used to kill Ray. He starts to raise his hands, more a threat than a submission, but Gault might be the only one here who understands that. When he grins, Gault knows he's finished, and lets some brief thoughts about what he might have done differently rattle through his mind. He might not have taken this job. In a strange way, he doesn't regret it. His life has maybe always been coming to this, and he feels part of something that is truly much bigger than himself, swallowed up by it but not in vain. He thinks of his family. What will Widmore tell them? Keamy's smile grows wider and wider. He gestures to a black box he's got taped to his arm.

"I don't think you want to do that, Captain," he says.

"What's that on his arm?" Gault shouts. He was ready to die until Keamy gave him one last goddamn thing to wonder about. "What's that on his arm?" He turns toward Frank, desperate to know.

Keamy shoots him in the heart. How stupidly appropriate, though not even as predictable as his last words, one more question about Keamy. He falls to the deck, disappointed that no one answered him.

From his puddle of blood he hears shouting, the helicopter chucking to life. Someone leans over him, and Gault know it's Keamy, recognizes the shadow of him even with his back turned, his heart stopped.

"Thanks, Captain." It's the last thing he hears, friendly and clear again. In trying to help Faraday, Gault might have actually saved Keamy. He was confused, unraveling, until Gault turned on him. Now, boots across the deck, he remembers, surely, who he really is.

*

It occurs to Gault at some point that he's doing a lot of thinking for a dead person, and he opens his eyes to daylight.

He's in a jungle.

He sits up, palms his chest. There is no blood stain, no wound. Reaching under his shirt, he finds not even the slightest scratch where the bullet tore his skin. Birds scream overhead, and he can hear the ocean close by. It's hot, or it must be, but he's not sweating. His clothes are clean.

Something is off. He's dead, so this shouldn't come as shocker. But he doesn't feel gone, not even quite numb, though the wind doesn't touch him when it moves the leaves on the trees around him.

"Mum?" he calls, thinking maybe he's in heaven, or at least some kind of afterlife. He thought the jungle might be some sort of sign from her, telling him she's nearby. No one answers. He stands up, and feels something like a click in his consciousness.

He's on top of a mountain, taking dizzying breaths of what should be thin air, though it doesn't feel like air at all, more like water with a menthol tint. Around him there is green and ocean, daylight filtered through heavy clouds. He reaches for his head, blinks, and finds himself on a beach. Turns to try and get his bearings, and he's back in the jungle. Flails around to grab hold of something, and he's in a bunker -- on the freighter? No, it's unfamiliar, then gone. He's surrounded by people who are arguing, walking among people who are marching, crouched with people who are hiding, and he doesn't recognize or get noticed by any of them. The switches come faster and faster, until he can't hold himself together anymore, feels close to a discombobulation that will scatter him everywhere, something worse than death.

"Wait!"

Someone grabs his wrists. He's afraid to open his eyes, but when he does he's back in the jungle, in a dark, sheltered section, a glade with trees that have trunks covered in twisted vines. A woman is holding onto him, staring at him with a kind of frightened vigilance.

"Concentrate!" she says. She sounds French. Gault shuts his eyes, chokes out a staggered breath. He thinks he's going to throw up, then that he'll become sick in some other way when throwing up comes to him as a suddenly very abstract concept.

"Look at my face!" the woman says. Gault doesn't want to, hates the thing that is racketing through him, like a shudder he needs to shake out but can't.

"What's your name?" the woman asks, trying to make her voice soothing, though Gault can tell already that it's not in her nature. There are other people here -- two teenagers huddled near a tree, watching him like they don't want him around.

"Huston Gault," he tells her. He tries to pull his wrists free, but she won't let him.

"And where were you born, Huston?"

"Rockhampton," he stutters. Images flash through his head, moving too fast -- the house by the water, Vera on the porch steps, his father's boat parked forever in the front yard -- and he needs to speak again or he'll get lost in them. "Australia."

"And where did you die?"

This steadies him more than anything, as if he was waiting for her to ask. He straightens, and she lets his wrists slip free.

"On a freighter," he says, blinking rapidly, the colors of the jungle sharpening around him, every imaginable shade of green. "Not far from here."

The woman nods as if she expected him to say so. Her name blooms through Gault's head -- Danielle Rousseau. Killed by Keamy. He turns to the teenagers by the tree, and knows that Keamy killed them, too. The girl looks haunted and angry, the boy terrified.

"He killed all of us," Rousseau says, needlessly. Gault stumbles backward.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I tried to stop him."

Rousseau shrugs. He didn't, really, and she knows that.

"Where am I?" he asks.

"The Island," she says. Gault already knew that, but it's nice to hear it out loud. He's got to cling to the small things he needed when he was alive, or he'll start skipping around again, disappear.

"Why?" he asks. "What's going on?"

"I don't know." Rousseau steps back. "All I know is that we are here. And we are not the only ones."

"I know, I saw other people, when I was --"

"Not the only dead ones, she means," the girl by the tree says. Her name is Alex. Keamy killed her mother and that boy right in front of her, then shot her in the head while Linus watched. Gault could swear now that he was there, that he saw the whole thing.

*

He finds Faraday easily, just thinks of him and he's there, on a beach crowded with worn, sunburned people. Charlotte is with him, Miles isn't. Gault is relieved, and he hangs back near the tree line, watching the two scientists speak with their heads bent together, away from the others. He wants to talk to Faraday, but knows he would only scare him, and anyway has no idea what he would say. Faraday wasn't with him on the ship, Gault only had his book. And his list. Gault reaches into his pocket, praying it's still there. Though his pocket knife and compass are gone, the list remains, and Gault reads it again, like there's some secret message hidden in it.

Looking at it now, he realizes at once that there is a message in the seemingly random words. Cereal, oranges, milk, easy mac, bread, animal crackers, coffee, kleenex. The first letters of each word glow out at him with an obviousness he can't believe he missed. It's spelled vertically down the paper: come back.

He looks up at Faraday, hoping the sight of him will make the message clearer. It doesn't. This can't be just a coincidence, but Gault has no idea what he's meant to do. He's dead, and he knows for certain that he can't come back, like he used to know for certain that he had hands, legs, breath in his chest. All of those things are just a vague idea now, and he can't reclaim them.

Maybe the message was meant for someone else. He thinks of releasing the list into the wind, then doesn't want to let it go. He tucks it back into his pocket, will consider it again later.

Sayid arrives in the Zodiac, and there is a commotion, plans being made. Gault wishes he could hear what the people around the boat are saying. Faraday pulls Charlotte away from the group, and Gault slinks back into the trees, watches them come closer.

"How the hell are we going to convince them to take us back?" Charlotte asks Faraday. "If it's up to them we'll be the last ones off."

"Maybe, maybe --" Faraday is scratching his head, pacing. Charlotte grabs his elbow.

"Dan, calm down."

"Calm down? Charlotte, you don't know what it'll be like. You don't know."

"Neither do you, actually."

"You're a woman," Faraday says, as if this is truly an epiphany. "You should use that, you know, try and go first."

"There are plenty of other women here, Dan, and what about you?"

"Me, yeah, what about me." Faraday strokes his beard, sighs into his hand.

"You could volunteer to drive," Charlotte says. "You know the bearing, and you'll have some pull with the others when you reach the ship."

"What about Miles?"

Charlotte scoffs. "What about him? We're not even sure he's still alive."

"He saved you, though. He gave you his vest when the chopper was--"

"Right, well what's your plan, then?" Charlotte shouts. She looks back at the others, lowers her voice. "You want to comb the jungle looking for him? I kind of doubt he'd do the same for us."

"You're right, you're right." Faraday takes her shoulders as if to brace himself for a moment, looks at the ground. "Okay. I'll ask them about driving. Maybe then we can -- get you on the boat sooner rather than later."

"Maybe. I shouldn't be around when you ask, at any rate. It'll look less suspicious if I'm not hovering."

"Alright. Alright. Just -- give me a second. I need to think for a second."

Charlotte groans with impatience, then squeezes his arm like an apology, nods.

"Don't be long," she whispers, and she walks off.

Faraday sits on a fallen tree trunk, wrings his hands. Gault can't imagine why he's hesitating. This is his chance -- Gault got him the boat, he's come up with a way to get onto it, what the hell is he waiting for?

He realizes too late that he's saying this out loud. His facilities work a bit differently now that he's dead. Faraday jumps up and stares at him with slow-building confusion.

"Um, Captain?" he says. He laughs a little in disbelief. Gault walks out from the trees, glancing at the beach to make sure no one else is watching, though he's not sure anyone else would be able to see him.

"What are you doing here?" Faraday asks. "Did you come on the helicopter?"

"Don't worry about it," Gault says. "Just go, you've got to go now."

"I know," Faraday says. "But I'm worried -- I don't know -- about the disorientation. I, um. I'm afraid that under this kind of stress -- and if people are with me, counting on me to get them -- and if I suddenly -- it's hard to explain --"

"Here," Gault says, reaching into his pocket. He takes out the grocery list, holds it so that Faraday won't have to touch his hand.

"What's that?"

"Just take it, Dan. It's yours."

Faraday sucks in his breath as if he understands the gravity of the list already, and what it's meant to Gault, what he's giving back to him. It's hope, and a reminder of life away from this place. He takes it.

"This is my handwriting," he says after reading it. "Where did you--"

"From a book you left on the ship. If you start to -- think that you're elsewhere, get confused, just look at that. Remember something normal. It -- it helped me, actually."

Faraday looks up at him, the openness of his face like a cold drink of water after a long night of boozing, a kind of relief Gault didn't expect to know again, being fundamentally bodiless.

"Helped you with what?" he asks.

"It helped me get that boat back here for you." Gault flicks his chin toward the Zodiac. "Now go on. Save as many as you can. Keamy -- he's here." Gault has felt it like a stone in his shoe for about an hour now.

"I know, I heard him on the -- does he know that you're here?"

"I don't think so, Dan. Better get a move on, then. Hurry up."

Faraday tucks the list into his shirt pocket, pats it once. He stares at Gault, seems to know something is wrong here but can't put his finger on it. Gault feels like he did on Sammy's first day of school, wants to walk forward and put his arms around this frightened person he's turning out into the world, but he's got to stand back. The time for that has passed.

"Thanks," Faraday says. He's still standing there.

"What are you waiting for?" Gault asks, trying to make his voice hard.

"I -- I don't know. How will you get off the Island?"

"I'll be with Keamy. Don't worry about me."

"Keamy won't, uh, do something to you? When he finds out?"

"He can't. He won't. Please, hurry."

"Alright." Faraday finally relents, starts to back away. "If you see Miles, try to, I don't know. Help him out, too, I guess."

He waves and starts to trot off down to the shore, where the Zodiac waits, the discussion about what to do next raging on among the others. Faraday turns back, sees Gault watching him go.

"Hey!" he calls. "I'll, uh. See you back on the ship!"

Gault waves, then flicks his hand forward, motioning for Faraday to get to the boat. He watches Faraday talking with Sayid, who allows him to climb into the Zodiac. Six other people get in, including a woman carrying an infant. Gault watches Faraday drive out into the waves, his passengers huddled behind him, and thinks the image has a sort of spiritual heft, like a religious painting, like something out of the Bible. If only he knew a relevant passage.

He turns back into the jungle, ready now to find someone who will.

*

Keamy is harder to locate, probably because he doesn't want to be found. Gault comes across his men in the late afternoon, creeping around an overgrown greenhouse. His new consciousness prods him to understand something about this place, but he ignores it, doesn't much care.

He walks right up behind Omar, testing to see if he'll sense him. Omar seems nervous, but that doesn't indicate anything beyond the situation already at hand, the men waiting to be bombarded with whatever Linus has left. Omar walks right past him, unseeing. Gault has the feeling Keamy won't be able to do the same. He wants too much for Keamy to get an eyeful, hasn't really enjoyed being a ghost until now.

Gault hears whispering and turns, startled, though he's got nothing left to be afraid of. Old habits die hard, he supposes, and he's grateful for it, will hang on to imitating a living person for as long as he can. He sneaks back into the brush, sees three men peering through it, watching the ones Keamy has stationed outside the greenhouse.

"Okay," a tall, bald one says. "I'm sorry, Ben, but maybe I missed the part where you explained what I'm supposed to do about the armed men inside."

Ben. The bug-eyed man standing between the bald man and the hugely overweight one must be Linus. He's so small, Gault almost wants to laugh. He stays hidden, just in case the infamous Mr. Linus has a talent for seeing dead people.

"I'm gonna take care of them," Linus says. There is something in his voice that compensates for his appearance, though there is a kind of fey quality to it at the same time. He is not at all what Gault expected, but whatever is, lately?

"And how the hell are you going to do that?" the bald man asks.

"How many times do I have to tell you, John?" Linus says. "I always have a plan."

Gault watches him walk into the courtyard by the greenhouse, stays hidden. Linus has his hands over his head, and maybe it’s only Gault’s vague new telepathy, but he feels certain that this odd little man will kill Keamy, though he appears to be unarmed.

Keamy walks out to receive him like a native king appraising a captive explorer. There's his mistake, putting on airs like that. It's much the other way around. Linus is the native here, and Gault feels the Island that has haphazardly imprisoned his soul perched like a thing ready to strike, as if it's an extension of Linus himself.

"My name is Benjamin Linus," Linus says to Keamy, dry, but not without malice that thins the air like a razor blade. "I believe you're looking for me."

Keamy puts a gun against his head, and Gault thinks for a moment that he's lost any sense of why he came here, will blow Linus away and stage a coup, steal Widmore's island for himself. But he only hits Linus with the butt of the gun, knocks him out.

His men detain Linus, dragging him away, and Keamy patrols the perimeter of the area, the tip of his tongue between his lips. He's looking for Linus' army. Gault turns back toward the two men who were with Linus, but they have already ducked to some other hiding place. Keamy stands alone, his gun drawn. Gault decides now is as good a time as any.

"Keamy," he says. Keamy jerks, a full-body flinch.

"Who's there?" he shouts, cocking his gun.

"What do you say, mate?" Gault asks, stepping out from the jungle. He smirks when Keamy's eyes go huge. Unfiltered terror is not a good look on him.

"Can we still be friends?" he asks, too angry to laugh at his own joke.

Keamy pumps an entire clip of ammunition into him. Gault hopes the bullets will pop back out of his chest like a movie's special effect, but they only disappear somewhere between Keamy's gun and his body.

"Guess not," he says, stepping closer. Keamy keeps trying to fire, the gun clicking uselessly. He's got another one on his belt, but seems to have forgotten it.

"You're dead!" he says, trying to choke down the shake in his voice. "They threw you into the ocean, I saw --"

"Probably not a good move." Gault is already slipping back into the trees as he hears Keamy's men running through the courtyard to see what he's shooting at. "If you'd kept me on the ship I might not have made it here,” he says before he disappears.

“Catch you later, Martin.”

*

///

Epilogue